


Secret Santa Fic

by crimsonThalposis



Category: Hiveswap, Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 10:12:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17242376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonThalposis/pseuds/crimsonThalposis
Summary: For @pecanrol on Twitter :DHappy New Year! <3Bronya finds a very special grub and makes a decision that saves a life.





	Secret Santa Fic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pecanrol](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=pecanrol).



Bronya had never much enjoyed 12th Perigee's Eve. In theory, it was beautiful; a celebration of surviving another sweep on Alternia's scarred surface, a night of gratitude for the remaining good health of one's lusus and one's hive. Not that she would ever voice such an ungrateful sentiment, but to Bronya the festivities were a different kind of reminder. A reminder of their greater purpose and of their necessity to trollkind.

Perhaps, in her weaker moments, she would look up at the glimmering star-crystals above and fantasise. A secluded moorland hive, vaulted and elegant in its solitude. A leaving, dragged gently inside by some cholerbear or terrodent for them to decorate and exchange gifts over. A brisk, frosty night of the dark season with her lusus at her side and the moons smiling blankly down on risky twilight escapades. Other such silly wigglerish dreams.

It was selfish to hope for such things. Unrealistic to expect them ever to come to pass. It was just draining, seeing the younger girls and Lanque pin up colourful decorations and dare each other to sneak out and hunt for a leaving as if the whole point of the holiday didn't fall apart against the vast certainty of their communal wigglerhoods. The older ones just moped around, not deigning to explain themselves and ignoring her attempts to join in their whispered talks. Maybe that was why she did it.

A few wipes into the last dark season of the sweep, there was a climax to the aggression. The three senior attendants, rowdy and drunk on stolen fermented tuber-based alcholic beverages, tempted fate and fell afoul of the enclave's designated drones. (It made continental news until the trespassing journalist and quadrants were culled. Mentioning them would be a mistake.) They hadn't technically been culled, that was to say. Whilst Bronya had had her doubts about how much of an accident it had been, there was little time to mourn when one was suddenly in charge of a gloomy enclave and at the mercy of jade-splattered drones if she didn't turn things around. Maybe that was why she really did it.

She turned things the fuck around.

That 12th Perigee's Eve, she'd given everyone the night off. They were annihilating the expectations for this time of sweep. The surviving grubs battered quality control checks like a highblood's rusty ex-kismesis, and there was no point trying to make her jades work when all they wanted to do was party and dance (for the younger ones) and drink and pail the day away. Anyway, this far into the final winter even the Mother Grub felt the chill in her sacred thorax. Production had already slowed to a predictable crawl. Half the time, a drone would barely have time to menacingly float into the brooding chamber before zipping back topside to deal with some riot or rebellious gathering.

There was a nauseating slowness to what was usually one of the busiest, loudest sectors on Alternia. After a few minutes, Bronya had to concentrate on not fiddling with her fringe before there was nothing left to mess with. It was just so quiet, a pervasive blanket of murmuring beasts that was punctured every so often by a screech or a scream.

Alone, running back and forth to stare down shivering lusii and coax the unresponsive newly-hatched towards their guardians, exhaustion set in. A creeping sense of inevitability spread from horn to strut pod, as it sometimes did out im the caverns. She decided to take a break.

The soothing, well-learned motions of wiping viscera from her skirt and sweat from her brow were a mere moment's worth of solace. Bronya sat with her back against the main compound's wall, bass from above juddering through her posture pole, and allowed herself a single minute to cry. She was cold and exhausted and surrounded by death, and she would never have a lusus to confide in, and she would never be away from the other jades, and she would never...

Remixed carols thumped through the stemcluster, and Bronya stood up in a daze.

In the handful of minutes she'd been gone, a hulking purpleblooded lusus had gored its charge and two lowblood grubs were crying on their backs nearby. Upturning them both with a grunt of effort, she assessed the purple grub. Huge eyes, tapering fangs, extremely small. And somehow, she realised, still alive. She reached out to touch it and it coughed, weakly.

It was madness. It was preposterous. It was a sickness of the mind not seen since the Dolorosa's heinous crimes had come to light. But something in its eyes wanted to live. And she wanted it to live, too.

The sunrise bell rung out as she stood there in deliberating anguish, and hungover, exhausted jades began to crest the ridge to start the day's work. Humming and buzzing grew louder and louder from the drones' chute. There was no time to make a conscious decision. Bronya bundled the bloody, mute little grub into her bosom and took her leave, with only a matronly smile to the others.

Into the office. Lock the door. Close the bolt. Chair under the handle. The jade's thinkpan spat out instructions rapidly until she was sat behind her desk with a grub leaking grape-coloured blood all over her OUT tray. Digging around in the supply cupboard yielded the blow-up pens from before pets were outlawed, and - alongside some diluted slime from the cupe she kept in the corner for busy times - she could formulate a decent shallow recuperee that the grub wouldn't drown in.

She lowered her new charge carefully into the green goop and smiled with a perverse sense of pride. It made an appreciative clicking sound and looked up at her with wide and glistening eyes. Although it...he was clearly in pain, he was still a purpleblood and the sopor helped plug the entry wound as well as could be expected.

As she tutted at the

He was so small. So delicate. As the gravity of what she was doing began to skitter across her skin in unpredictable shivers, Bronya thought about how easy it would be to...no. Of course she couldn't cull him. Lanque always said she was soft, underneath.

She hated that he was right. She hated that she couldn't bring herself to do the safe thing.

She hated, most of all, that she didn't even feel in control of her own body as she nudged the pool into the cupboard and locked the door. Still gripped by the same muffled haze, Bronya found herself sitting mechanically behind her desk and reaching for a rag to clean the vivid purple from her precious polished hardwood.

Then, sleep.

Without the comfort of sopor, she lifted her head from the table feeling dry and vaguely fearful. (The beginning of a daymare? A relief, then, to be sore and awake. She really needed to invest in a splaysac.) The clock said it hadn't been long at all but more importantly, someone was rapping smartly on the door.

The grub was still in the cupboard, head cocked towards the harsh sound. Her hair felt mussed and parted around her horns when she felt it, and the inside of her shirt was encrusted in amethyst gore.

She adjusted the shoulder straps and shut the door on the gurgling grub before rushing to the door, not bothering with her hair in the moment. Chair out from under the handle. Open the bolt. Unlock the door. Open the door.

See Lynera.

Of course it would be Lynera. Her most trusted colleague, here to deliver the midday report as early as ever. Who else would be here, and for what reason?

"Um." Lynera looked her up and down, arms slack and eyes wide. "I! Hello!" She thrusted a clipboard into Bronya's arms and blinked. Even for her, that was jumpy. "Am I...interrupting? Which is to say, uh. I'm sorry! If I am doing that!" She looked oddly furious, presumably with herself.

Ah. Right. Of course.

"No, Lynera, you aren't," she murmured in what she hoped was a comforting tone. "I'd like to think I'm not having a feelings jam in my off-"

"HONK!" honked the cupboard gleefully.

Lynera flushed jade. She made a strangled choking noise, eyes downcast after flickering towards the sound, and ran.

And that was that. The continued survival and pupation of the little pie-rotter was almost worth the common assumption that she was secretly in the pale with a bloody subjugglator. Almost. He never seemed to enjoy learning to communicate, except in clicks or honks, and eventually she left him be.

He was a fast learner, and caught on very quickly to the concept of how quickly he and Bronya would be culled if he was found down in the jades' stemcluster. Teaching him what she knew about self-defence was easy, and soon enough her affectionately-nicknamed "little pie-rotter' surpassed her.

Bubbly and cheerful and violent, he was the perfect clown; albeit with the stature of a goldblood and the kindness of a rusty.

Of course, there was the time when she was teaching him to read. It was from a rather dry textbook of jade-purple diplomatic guidelines, most of which consisted of agreeing and standing out of range. The boy seemed bored out of his mind, dutifully following her words with a claw, but when confronted with the symbol of the Dark Carnival he perked right up.

"Honk! Honk?" piped up the usually quiet student as she went through the riveting facets of what jewellery to wear in the vicinity of visiting highbloods. Classic trick question.

The inflection in his honks was easy enough to understand. Already, to a worrying extent, it mirrored the way a lusus would always find some way to contact their charge. Bronya took pride in it and smiled back at him.

"It's called a carousel," she explained, trying to accurately represent with her hands the shape of such religious iconography. "It's one of the features of the Church, and you can find them at nearly every fairground. Do you remember when we went over fairground law? Purplebloods' mirthful right and such."

To no troll's surprise he wasn't listening at all, but Bronya didn't want to berate him. As he fiddled with the clasp on his black and jade tunic, thrifted from deep storage in his first excursion outside of the office, he was definitely trying to imitate the word whilst jabbing at the page.

"Karel! Karsel!"

"Carousel," she corrected mildly, guiding his claw to the relevant letters and trying not to betray her excitement. Was this it? Was he finally embracing spoken language?

"Karokel! Honk?" Not quite, thought Bronya.

"Not quite," she said out loud. "Try drawing out the sound in the middle. Ca-ra-sell."

"Ka-ra-kell! Ka-ra-kol!" It was only degrading further with each attempt, but at least he seemed to be enjoying himself. This was possibly more words than he'd ever spoken in total. Even if they were made up.

"Ka-ra-koeeeeee! HONK!" When Bronya just dipped her head warmly instead of correcting him, he clapped in delight and honked, pointing to himself and the page with earnest religious fervour.

"Ka-ra-koe! Karakoh! Karrakoh! HOOOONK!"

And Karako he was. Little Karako Pierot, professionally registered after a paperwork mishap and totally legally viable. Nobody would ever seem to know where his lusus was, or where he slept, but nobody was going to challenge a purpleblood with so very mank knives. And, perhaps even more intimidating, the blessing of Bronya Ursama.


End file.
